Scieszka Bumps ‘Graveyard Book’ from SLJ's Battle of the (Kids') Books

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SLJ Staff -- School Library Journal, 4/13/2009 2:00:00 PM

Say what? Sid Fleischman’s The Trouble Begins at 8: A Life of Mark Twain in the Wild, Wild West (Greenwillow) bumped Neil Gaiman’s Newbery-winning The Graveyard Book (HarperCollins) out of the running in SLJ’s Battle of the (Kids') Books contest.

In what may be equivalent to David beating Goliath, Judge Jon Scieszka praised Gaiman’s “very smart and emotionally satisfying” page-turner, but bypassed it for Fleischman’s story because some readers might not be such big fans of fantasy and gothic stories.

“What if the reader had read more than enough of wizards and ghosts and demon ghosts and vampires in recent kids’ lit?” Scieszka wrote on SLJ’s tournament blog. “What if the rush that the reader was really craving was some real history, some real facts, and some real pictures? Then Sid Fleischman’s kid-friendly bio of Mark Twain, The Trouble Begins at 8, would be just the ticket...and just the book to knock out the Graveyard champ.”

Scieszka goes on to say that the Mark Twain bio is packed with interesting facts and is “also a fantastic teaching tool as a model biography.”

Stay tuned tomorrow, when Round One’s third and fourth matches take place. That’s when Elizabeth Partridge chooses between Laurie Halse Anderson’s Chains (S & S) and Russell Freedman’s Washington at Valley Forge (Holiday House) and Meg Rosoff decides between Philip Reeve’s Here Lies Arthur (Scholastic) and Margo Lanagan’s Tender Morsels (Knopf).

Scieszka is part of a panel of 15 kids’ book authors that will pick the winner of SLJ’s Battle of the Books, which kicked off yesterday with the first of four elimination rounds, pitting 16 of last year’s best books for young people against one another in a winner-takes-all showdown (think college basketball’s March Madness).

The top prize, which will be selected by Lois Lowry, the author of the Newbery Medal–winning The Giver, will be announced on Wednesday, May 6.

SLJ’s Battle of the (Kids’) Books is the brainchild of three educators: Monica Edinger and Roxanne Feldman of the Dalton School in New York City and Jonathan Hunt, an elementary school librarian in Modesto, CA. The competition was inspired by the Morning News’ Tournament of Books, an annual competition featuring the previous year’s best novels for adults.

To follow the action and to see a complete list of judges and books, visit SLJ's tournament blog. And while you’re there, don’t forget to vote for your own favorite title in the Peoples’ Choice poll.